Talk:Larval food plants of Lepidoptera
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[edit] List naming
Shouldn't the lists listed in this, um, list follow the naming scheme: "List of Lepidoptera that feed on..." instead of "which"? I believe the use of "which" requires a comma before it. Use of "that" sounds better to me, but I'm no grammar expert. Just a thought. Cheers, --Rkitko (talk) 04:44, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
- Also, the titles should use proper capitalization. For example, "grasses" is not a proper noun, nor is "elms". --Rkitko (talk) 18:51, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Fixing the grammar
I'm going to start this, but I anticipate it will be a slow process, so any help would be appreciated. The following is a list of all of them. If done, they will be struck out (like this). If anyone decides to help, please don't just move the pages, but also correct links using the "What links here" special page, so that articles are also grammatically correct. Thanks! --Storkk (talk) 17:33, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
- Note: capitalization of non-proper nouns should also be fixed, and for consistency's sake, I think all plant names should be plural (unless as a latin name, they already are) --Storkk (talk) 16:37, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
- This still leaves some difficulty, e.g. "heather". --Storkk (talk) 17:18, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
- I'm no horticulturalist, but Abelia is a genus name so it should remain capitalized. I guess to be entirely accurate, it should be something like "List of Lepidoptera that feed on Abelia species" or something like that. Abelia may also be the common name associated with those plants in horticulture, as Latin has its way of sometimes diffusing into gardening culture. I must say, you're doing a great job on this already. As for the problem with "heather", it's often used as a plural itself. If you'd like, we could present this problem to WP:PLANTS and see what others think. User:Hardyplants, I believe, is a horticulturalist and may be better suited to answering some of the more difficult determinations on capitalization and pluralization. Cheers, Rkitko (talk) 17:37, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
- This still leaves some difficulty, e.g. "heather". --Storkk (talk) 17:18, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
- Well, I've done all that I can be reasonably sure about except for Poplar, which, because of previous moves cannot be de-capitalized by a non-admin such as myself. I pluralized "rhododendron" as "rhododendrons" as that's how it's done in the rhododendron article, though i thought it was "rhododendra". I'll post this to WP:PLANTS now, and let people who know more than I do do the rest. I think best practice is that if a genus has a single major common name, it should probably be used instead of the latin for consistency's sake (i.e. what was done substituting "plantains" for "Plantago"). Good luck to whoever finishes this. --Storkk (talk) 19:00, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
I make no claims to be an expert-but I can contribute: If you are referring to a genus as a classification name it is italizied and the first letter capitalized, it can not be made plural because it is one unit. Lepidoptera which feed on Achillea. there is only one genus called Achillea.
If a common name and the genus name are the same the common name can be made plural but refers to a collective group of plants and not the genus. Some common names can like aster, refer to groups of plants that are not in the genus Aster. So "I like asters", is a larger group than "I like Aster plants". When referring to just a few, I like five Aster species, limits the group to those species in the genus.
Heather would refer to to all plants commonly called heathers including those in the genus Callunas and Ericas. The problem now is do you capatizes the first letter of a common name- and the answer is: be consistent, this is an issue that is not uniformly settled in the "real word" but I think wikipedia has some rules that cover this, arrived at after a number of long and sometimes contentious discourses. Hardyplants (talk) 19:33, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
- After your comment, I was emboldened to do the great majority of those remaining. All those that remain, I'm still unsure about. Those are: Cirsium (has that become a common noun in English?), Heather (this has, but how to word it correctly?), Prunus (I'm at a loss), and Tilia ("Lime" would seem very confusing to those unfamiliar with the tree). Only 4 left! Cheers, --Storkk (talk) 23:34, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
